How much is “enough” marketing?

How much is “enough” marketing

When people talk about the disruptions in the freelance language services world lately (“disruptions”=everything from ChatGPT to wars), I often say, yes, and:

• Most freelance translators and interpreters don’t do enough of any kind of marketing to really move the needle.
• It’s rare that I talk to a freelancer who is doing what I would consider enough marketing, even when that person thinks they’re marketing like crazy.

In response to which, a student asked me a good question. What’s “enough”?? What’s an example of someone doing enough marketing?

Great newsletter topic! I’m not going to use myself as an example, because I’m not doing a ton of active marketing at the moment. I’m a huge believer in the concept of Always Be Marketing, and I hold myself to the requirement of doing some kind of marketing action every weekday. And, as I recently wrote in a newsletter, I’m very fortunate that I have a lot of work right now; I’m always open to new work, but I’m not doing a big marketing campaign.

Two good examples

Here are two examples that I think are illustrative. Honestly, I think that only post-ChatGPT examples are relevant right now, because AI has had such an effect on the market for all kinds of freelance work. Both of these are from freelance writers; I find very few examples of translators and interpreters who talk about their marketing and income in detail, and I think that freelance writers’ work is similar enough to ours that we can use them as a good example.

First, let’s look at the March 30, 2026 issue of Jen A. Miller’s newsletter, Notes from a Hired Pen, “Results of a March marketing sprint.” You should subscribe, if you don’t already! Jen is a six-figure freelancer whose writing I really admire. She reports that she started March 2026 “…the most worried I’ve been about my business in a long time,” largely due to a decrease in work from her higher education clients. Jen then did her own March Marketing Sprint, and (even as someone who’s always telling people to do more marketing), both her effort and her results are really impressive.

If you’re working on your own marketing, you should definitely read the “What I did” section of this article. For example, Jen followed up twice with any promising leads from the past. She nudged every dormant client, going back to 2019. She also pitched extra services to her current clients, and immediately followed up with every client that she submitted a piece to, asking them for more work.

This totaled almost 100 letters of introduction to new clients, plus 77 follow ups, and 39 nudges. The result: $15,805 of new work. I’d call this a great example of “enough” marketing, with a great return on the effort.

Next, let’s look at freelance finance writer Carter Kilmann’s LinkedIn Pulse article, Crunching numbers: What 100 pitches taught me about prospecting, published in June 2024. At the time, this article caught my eye because Carter took Ed Gandia’s e-mail prospecting class (an experience he details in this article) and then actually took action! As the title of the article would suggest, Carter then decided to market via targeted e-mail to 100 potential clients in the three months after he took Ed’s class. His results:

• 67 of his prospects opened either his initial e-mail or the follow-up e-mail. Carter tracked this using a tool called Streak. Tracking e-mail opens requires a certain degree of emotional fortitude, because people do odd things like open your e-mail 11 times and never respond, but Carter correctly notes that it can also allow you to move on from someone who deletes your e-mails without reading them.
• 12 people responded. He counted any response, positive or negative.
• Six of the e-mails turned into a conversation.
• Of those six, two of them turned into clients.

In the three months since he did the campaign, those two clients had sent Carter $6,500 of work. He spent $249 on Ed’s class, and the total time investment (taking the class, finding people to market to, sending the e-mails and the following e-mails) was about 55 hours. Thus, even if he never got any more work from those two clients (and I’m guessing that he did get more work from them, because he went on to write another article about how he had become too busy to continue writing his newsletter, earning as much in one month as in his first two years of freelancing combined), and counting total time, even taking the class, that’s an hourly rate of $118 which is certainly decent.

Why am I telling you this?

Now, why I am I showing you these examples? To taunt you, and to make you feel even worse if you, like a recent attendee in one of my classes, “would rather dig yourself into a hole than do marketing”? No, definitely not.

When you see other freelancers doing these kinds of things, let them lead the way and show you what is possible. Jen and Carter are solopreneur freelancers like you, making a solid six-figure income. They’re not the head of an empire with tons of subcontractors and a big marketing team. You can do this, too. And, as we see here, it takes a lot of work. When we look at Carter’s 12% response rate, the really hard part is slogging through the 88 who never responded. Most of us don’t nudge clients from six months ago, much less do what Jen did and go back six years in our accounting records to find people to nudge. Rather than using this as another reason to feel bad about yourself (none of us need more of those!), use this as inspiration! I’m cheering for you; let me know how your next marketing campaign works out!

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